Water can be a metaphor for life or death. Ask anyone who has gotten sick from contaminated water or tried to avoid falling out of a canoe while going down the Amazon River teeming with deadly piranhas. They will tell you that water can be deadly. But what about a person dying of thirst in … Read more
Each year on Christmas Eve, millions of people gather around their TV sets—or today, their computer screens—to watch the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life. The main character, George Bailey, has a chance to see what the small town of Bedford Falls would have been like if he had never been born. In one scene, … Read more
In the fiction-writing community, there are two terms thrown around quite a bit: plotters and pantsers. Plotters are writers who know the whole plot of the story before they start writing. Pantsers are those who write “by the seat of their pants” and prefer to start with a situation, then discover the plot as they … Read more
You’ve heard the saying “curiosity killed the cat.” The phrase has been around in some form or another for hundreds of years and is meant to be a warning to those who would investigate a matter too closely. Perhaps we take it a little too far. When have you ever heard of someone actually being … Read more
We live in a world where miraculous things happen every day. Of course, most of these things don’t seem miraculous to us. They seem ordinary. But it all depends on your perspective. Seeing with your eyes seems ordinary to you, but to a blind person, it’s astonishing. Taking a breath seems ordinary to you, but … Read more
Everyone feels writer’s block sometimes. The next time you aren’t sure what to write about, try combining two things you love. If you love teaching and movies, write a book about how to use movies in the classroom, or write a series of blog posts on famous classroom scenes from the movies. If you love … Read more
We’ve all heard it before (and probably said it): “I’m just not feeling inspired today.” There might be a hundred reasons why we don’t feel inspired, but there is one way to correct that works almost every time. Madeleine L’Engle gave us the secret when she said: “Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before … Read more
Whatever you think about the origins of the universe, one thing seems certain: the universe started as a kind of blank slate that is now filled with stars, planets, comets, gas, dark matter, and all manner of other debris and material. Think about the effort and creativity that must have gone into the creation of … Read more
In your writing life, you will find that it’s easy to let go of some things, and much harder to let go of others. One of the items it’s difficult to let go of is books. After all, you’re a writer… why would you get rid of books? The reality is that we fill our … Read more
Think about the last time you went to the eye doctor. You probably thought you were seeing just fine until the exam. It turns out your vision was blurry and you didn’t even know it. Our creativity works the same way. We get busy and distracted. We lose sight of the amazing world around us … Read more